October, 2007 archive

As I pointed out here.

It’s called history. It’s sort of made up by a lot of facts and some interpretation. But the interpretation has to at least give a passing nod to the facts.

The history tells us where we came from and helps us figure out where we are going.

Lying about the history confuses us about both.

But, then, there are folks who base their way of life, their philosophies, and their politics on lies.

Josh Marshall comments.

Tizzy in a teacup:

A do-it-yourself Craftsman-style Sears kit house, painstakingly assembled in 1925 by its owner, is up for grabs in Northwest Washington — not for a price but simply for the taking.

The two-story house, assessed by the District tax office at $813,950, has been boarded up for more than a decade and hardly looks like the showplace depicted in old Sears catalogue drawings. A plumber named Jesse Baltimore put it together — all 10,000 parts — with the help of a 77-page Sears, Roebuck and Co. instruction book. He was among thousands of people across the nation who bought the company’s house kits decades ago.

A plumber built this house in the Palisades neighborhood in 1925 from a kit he purchased from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog.

Neighbors advocating demolition declared the house an eyesore years ago. But preservationists hailed it as an important symbol of how Washington’s working-class neighborhoods developed after World War I. The preservationists wanted to keep the house right where it sits in the Palisades neighborhood.

(Aside: Northwest Washington is definitely the high-rent district.)

I grew up on the Sears and Montgomery Ward Catalogs. On Pine View Farm, they were our link to shopping. The nearest cities were 90 miles away (north) or 40 miles and an hour-and-a-half ferry ride (south).

A house in a box is certainly a curiosity, but really not much different from the McMansions being thrown up now (I have seen the kits from a leading McMansion manufacturer heading down the road on the backs of flat-beds–don’t remove the scaffolding until the Ty-Vek is up), but, given that, as the story later points out, “(a)bout 90 percent of the estimated 75,000 Sears houses sold across the country still stand,” this house is hardly a historical site worthy of preservation.

More a historical curiosity.

It was good to see First Son and First Daughter-in-Law.

The campus of my alma mater has not changed much. A few new buildings, a couple of new statues, and co-eds a lot younger than I remember them.

Colonial Disneyland is still as nice as ever.

And the wireless cloud in the hotel did not reach our room, but, in all other ways, the hotel was top-notch.

First Son will be on the way back to Afghanistan early next month, hopefully to end his S(pl)urged ™ tour next spring.

He reckons that, after that, it will be back to Iraq.

I just can’t think of anything more to say.

The Honorable Pete Stark:

He went on to say, “in his previous job as an actor, our governor used to play make believe and blow things up. Well, the president and the Republicans in Congress are playing make believe today with children’s lives. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up, in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.”

The scathing comments drew immediate condemnation from Republicans, who demanded he retract it. “Congressman Stark’s statement dishonors not only the commander in chief, but the thousands of courageous men and women of America’s armed forces who believe in their mission and are putting their lives on the line for our freedom and security,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

When asked if he would take back any of his statements, Stark told KCBS “Absolutely not. I may have dishonored the commander in chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me.”

Fairly typical on the part of the Republicans, actually.

Rather than deal with the substance of the comments, they resort to ad hominem attacks.

Ad hominem attacks–the first resort of those who have nothing going for them.

Via Susie.

I have stop kicking the plug for the hub out of the UPS.

One of the neat things about the golden era of porn in the 1970’s and the 1980’s (before the internet made porn accessible to everyone) was the titles of the movies.

I remember walking up Market Street from 30th Street Station to the office at 20th and Market and passing the theatre (right next to the massage parlor where once I saw a very happy looking guy in a wheelchair exiting) advertising “The Oral Majority.”

Well, the majority seems to have become a minority.